as the second decade began the auto owned the streets in san francisco and other big towns. but it was still the rich who owned them. henry ford changed all that. instead of making cars one at a time, the ford factory mass produced them with an idea called assembly lines. at last regular folks could take to the roads, and in the roaring 20s they did. charging up and down the steep streets of san francisco in an exhilarating triumph of machinery own topography. but outside city limits there were no paveed roads and no road signs. a cloud of dust raised by one automobile made visibility pretty chancy for anyone behind. nonetheless, car owners took their chance bouncing on rocks and that was part of the fun. where there wasn't a road, try a rail track, or a pipeline. all that was fun in the summer. but in winter those dirt roads turned to mush and automotive adventuring found themselves bogged down all across the landscape. while henry ford was building cars nobody was building roads. fortunately there was already an organization working to improve the lives of drivers. a small